A digital loyalty card for your ice cream parlour

An ice cream parlour lives on a short, intense season and a lot of impulse decisions. On a hot Sunday, the family walking along the promenade stops at the first place with a reasonable queue. A loyalty card gives them a reason to walk on to yours, and it solves the hardest problem in the trade: being remembered in March, after four months behind closed shutters.

What to reward, and after how many stamps?

Keep it close to what people come for. The reward should be reachable within one summer, or the card loses its pull.

• 8A free cone with two scoopsReachable in one season for regular families.
• 5An extra scoop for freeQuick win for kids and teenagers.
• 10A free milkshake or iced coffeeGood if you also run a terrace.
• 10A small tub to take homeShows off your flavours beyond the cone.

Example calculation. A cone with two scoops sells for €4.50. Milk, cream, sugar, fruit and the cone cost you around €0.90. After 8 stamped visits at about €4.50 each, the customer has spent €36, so the free cone costs you about 2.5 % of their spending. If one order covers a whole family, the visit is worth more and the share drops further. These numbers are examples: use your own recipe costs.

A card can hold between 3 and 30 stamps. For an ice cream parlour, 5 to 10 is right: fewer than a café, because people come weekly at best, and only when the sun is out. If you change the number later, only new cards follow; cards already running keep their rule.

Which card type fits an ice cream parlour?

A stamp card (Essential) is all most parlours need. One order, one stamp, a free cone at the end. It is easy to explain to a queue of families in a hurry.

Points (Pro) only make sense if you sell a lot more than cones: ice cream cakes for communions, frozen logs at Christmas, tubs by the litre. Then 1 point per euro rewards the €35 cake order more than a single scoop.

Several cards (Pro) let you run a stamp card for cones next to, say, a card for your coffee terrace in the off-season.

A membership or a prepaid pack is rarely worth it here. Keep it simple.

How does stamping work during the rush?

The rush is a sunny Sunday afternoon, or the first hot day of the year, with a queue out the door. Usually one or two people scoop while someone else takes the money.

• Put the scanner phone at the till, not at the freezer, so the person who scoops doesn’t touch it with sticky hands.
• The person at the till scans the customer’s pass after payment, cash, Bancontact or Payconiq. It takes two seconds and shows the name and progress, for example “Lucas · 5/8”.
• One parent paying for four cones gets one stamp on their card. The cooldown (5 minutes by default) makes this the rule automatically. Children don’t need their own card.
• Holiday staff log in with a PIN on the shared phone, so you don’t create accounts for every student job.
• A wrong scan is corrected by the owner or a manager in the dashboard with Adjust stamps; the reason and who made the change are logged.
• When a card is full, “Claim + add today’s stamp” hands over the free cone and starts the next card with today’s order.

At the coast, the scanner needs internet. Check that your Wi-Fi or mobile data works at the till before the season starts.

Seasonal and occasion ideas

• March or April: reopening on the first warm weekend. Your most important message of the year.
• Easter holidays: families out on day trips, the first busy weekends at the coast and in the Ardennes.
• Spring: communion and confirmation cakes, if you make ice cream cakes.
• First heatwave: the day that makes your season.
• July and August: summer holidays, the coast (from De Panne to Knokke), city parks, terraces.
• September: last warm weekends, then your closing date. Tell customers their stamps stay valid next season.
• December: frozen logs (bûche glacée, ijstaart) for Christmas and New Year, if you open for orders.

What to send by push or e-mail

With Pro, push messages appear on the customer’s lock screen through the Wallet pass. Only customers who ticked the news box receive them. Examples:

• Title: “We’re open again” Message: “The shutters are up and the first batch of the season is ready. Your stamps from last year are still on your card.”
• Title: “30 °C today” Message: “Heatwave flavours are in: mango sorbet and stracciatella. Open until 22:00 tonight.”
• Title: “Last weekend of the season” Message: “We close on Sunday at 19:00. Your stamps stay on your card until we reopen in spring.”

E-mail idea: in late November, send an e-mail about your Christmas frozen logs with photos and an order deadline.

Send fewer messages than you think: the reopening, one or two heatwave days, the closing, and a Christmas order message if you take orders. With Pro you can also add your shop location to the pass. Apple Wallet then shows a short line on the lock screen when someone is within 100 m of your shop, and Google Wallet shows the card nearby; useful for a kiosk on a promenade that people pass by every day.

Common objections

“Most of our customers are tourists.” Many are not one-off tourists: coast regulars, second-home owners and day trippers come back every summer. Those are the people the card is for.

“We close five months a year.” The card stays in the wallet with its stamps. Paper cards get lost over winter; the wallet card does not.

“The queue is long enough.” The scan comes after payment and takes two seconds, while the customer is already holding their cone. You can stamp only those who have the card ready.

“Kids don’t have phones.” The card belongs to the parent who pays. A teenager with a phone can join on their own.

What does it cost?

Essential is €29 a month excl. VAT: one location, one stamp card, unlimited customers and scans, and the first counter stand included. That covers most parlours. Pro, at €59 a month, adds the reopening message, location reminders and extra cards; each extra address costs €19 a month. You can try Pro free for 14 days, and early Belgian merchants can keep the founding price of €19 a month for life.